Small-scale farmer Sookram Satrohan is full and plenty of trouble: over 3 000 pounds of cucumbers harvested and no market to sell them.
With thousands more pounds of the veggies set to mature in the coming days, Satrohan is racing against time to offload his current stock, fearing spoilage and substantial financial loss.
Satrohan revealed that he is prepared to slash prices drastically to avoid waste, offering cucumbers at $0.50 per pound – significantly below the usual retail price of $1 or more.
“I don’t have any market for the food that I am picking, so I am going to sell it for $0.50 per pound. I have about 3 000 pounds of cucumbers to pick,” he told Barbados TODAY, adding that attempts to sell his produce to retail outlets had been unsuccessful.
Satrohan attributed the lack of demand to the time of year, with purchasing habits slowing down as the school term begins. He also pointed out that other farmers were also selling cucumbers, further saturating the market. “The market is very slow. Coming on to school time, things get really slow; buying habits change. I tried calling around, people told me they would get back to me, but I have been waiting and waiting – nothing. I had to dump a lot. Another reason things are slow is that other farmers have cucumbers as well.”
The seasoned farmer suggested that government intervention could alleviate the struggles of small-scale farmers like himself. He proposed that a programme be introduced to help farmers sell their produce, particularly in times of low demand.
He said: “It is very costly to produce crops, and when you lose it, you are faced with losses. I don’t like throwing away food, but sometimes you have to do that because you can’t give it all away. When I sell at $0.50 per pound, it is way below the market price, but that is what I have to do because I have to pay workers. Labour is $100 a day, and over six weeks, you can do the maths. And that is only labour – that’s not the input cost.”
Satrohan also highlighted the competition posed by imported produce which, he argued, makes it even harder for farmers to find a market. He called on the government to consider buying produce from farmers and establishing a depot or entity dedicated to selling homegrown food, which he believes would boost food security and increase farmers’ confidence.
“If the government buys the farmers’ food and opens a depot, farming will be successful because you will be sure about your market. Or some entity can open with the purpose of selling local food. There will be a great increase and better food security. But when you grow all this food and can’t get it sold, farmers will step back, and people will complain they cannot get local food.”
With 30 years of farming experience, Satrohan is also advocating for the greater use of home-grown crops as natural remedies, particularly in tackling the island’s rising non-communicable disease (NCD) epidemic. He noted that cucumbers, in particular, could be used creatively in health drinks.
“We can juice crops like cucumber, pair it with ginger, and sell it to supermarkets. The natural juices can be used to cleanse the body,” he suggested.
Satrohan, who operates on an acre of land at River Plantation in St Philip, harvests approximately 120 bags of cucumbers – each weighing over 80 pounds – every week.
Launched in the final months of the Freundel Stuart administration in February 2018, the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security launched the Bajan Agricultural Marketplace, an online trading platform to connect farmers with various buyers in the agricultural value chain, including consumers, retailers, and the hospitality industry. The platform was intended to improve pricing transparency and reduce transaction costs, thereby improving market access for farmers and increasing their profitability.
A second phase of the project, an Agricultural Market Information System and Farm Management System were expected to be developed, according to the BARMIS page on the ministry’s website.
